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I saw her, pegging out her webthin as a pressed flower in the bleaching light.From the bushes a few small insectsclicked like opening seed-pods. I knew somewould be trussed up by her and gone next morning.She was so beautiful spinning her webabove the marigolds the sun had mademore apricot, more amber; any beelost from its solar flight could be gatheredback to the anther, and threaded onto the flowerlike a jewel. She hung in the shadowsas the sun burnt low on the horizonmirrored by the round garden bed. Small petalsmoved as one flame, as one perfectly-lit hoop.I watched her work, produce her known world,a pattern, her way to traversea little portion of the sky;a simple cosmography, a web drawnby the smallest nib. And out of my own worldmapped from smallness, the sourceof sorrow pricked, I could see immovable stars. Each nightI saw the same dance in the sky,the pattern like a match-box puzzle,tiny balls stuck in a grid until shakenso much, all the orbits were in place.Above the bright marigoldsof that quick year, the hour-long day,she taught me to love the smallest transit,that the coldest star has planetesimal beauty.I watched her above the low flowerstracing her world, making it one perfect drawing.

by Judith Beveridge
from The Domesticity of Giraffes
Black Lightning Press, 1987

If, theoretically, life begins at 100, I've hardly started. Let's go on this journey together toward crossgenerational understanding, even when we agree to disagree about the symbols we use to describe "journey" or anything else that we trust each other to accept as fact, fiction, or ether/either.